The Lovely Bones

There's a difference between picturing something and seeing something. That's the difference between books and movies, a difference that works to the detriment of "The Lovely Bones," based on the novel by Alice Sebold.

The same opening that's compelling on the page - "I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973" - becomes the focus of dread for a movie audience, because we know, sooner or later, that we're going to be forced to sit through something we don't want to see. Even if director Peter Jackson ultimately chooses not to render the murder in graphic terms, actually seeing a young girl being tricked by a predator and gradually becoming terrified feels more than disturbing. It feels profane.

To be specific, it feels almost as if, by watching, we're violating her, too - not Susie Salmon, the central character, and not Saoirse Ronan, the brilliantly talented young actress who plays her - but all the real-life Susies. Even when presented with sensitivity, respect and taste, there's just something unsettling about public entertainment that's made from this particular variety of private suffering.

What is there to be gained from this, that we should feel worse? Or come to some false sense of understanding that makes us feel better about something we shouldn't feel better about?

Photo: DreamWorks Pictures

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Mark Wahlberg in The Lovely Bones.

Mark Wahlberg in The Lovely Bones.

Photo: DreamWorks Pictures

Review: 'The Lovely Bones'

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So "The Lovely Bones" is difficult viewing, a meticulously crafted experiment that, it turns out, wasn't worth it. For the first third, we dread the murder. For the other two-thirds, interspersed with scenes on Earth, we see Susie in some version of the afterlife, to which Jackson devotes all his artistry as a visual technician. Of all the nonaction movies ever made, "The Lovely Bones" may be the most special-effects heavy, and at times Jackson gets carried away. Even when he doesn't, Jackson's afterlife belongs only to him, and it's a poor substitute for any afterlife you yourself might imagine from the page.

Surprisingly - but maybe not, if you appreciate the difference between print and film - the earthbound scenes work better. As a police detective (Michael Imperioli) investigates, the murderer lurks in plain sight, in the form of a seemingly harmless bachelor (Stanley Tucci) who lives down the street. Though prone to grand flourishes, Jackson can do conciseness and control - as in the moment when the dead girl's father (Mark Wahlberg) looks at the guilty neighbor and suddenly knows everything. Jackson doesn't adorn the moment with any thundering on the soundtrack or imagined flashbacks. He just lets it land.

The movie's one false note comes in the form of Susan Sarandon, as Susie's lusty, hard-drinking grandmother, who is comic relief in a film that can't have any. And what was Jackson thinking by throwing in a montage of Sarandon to the accompaniment of the Hollies' old hit "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress"?

Still, the suffering of the father and mother (Rachel Weisz), the strain on their marriage, the calibration of their emotions over the course of years - not to mention the passing of the years themselves - all these are treated with intelligence and insight. As someone who actually was 14 in December 1973, I also appreciated the re-creation of the era, down to the David Cassidy photo in Susie's locker. It remains out of focus, but anyone who was alive at the time would recognize it.

It's possible that a sparer rendering of the novel might have achieved a cleaner, less dreamy and less inappropriately sentimental effect. But that's just a guess. A better guess is that Jackson made as good a film as could be made, and that the flaws of "The Lovely Bones" as a film were built into the story's design.

-- Advisory: Violence and a subject that is off-the-charts disturbing.